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buffalo
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Stephen Barr good enough? Or how bout Paul Davies? Hawking, too.
If God both created the Universe and cares about humans, why did he make it so large?
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inocente
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Yes, it will be cool to see so many different forms of life on other planets across the universe.
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Ghosty
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Everyone seems to be assuming that God made the universe “for humans”, but I don’t think that’s a teaching of the Church. Maybe God just wanted a really big universe, and for humans to inhabit it in our own little corner.
We may be the peak of material creation, but that doesn’t mean all material creation was made specifically for our sake, rather than for its own sake.
Peace and God bless!
We may be the peak of material creation, but that doesn’t mean all material creation was made specifically for our sake, rather than for its own sake.
Peace and God bless!
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Logic101
Guest
To show you His power and to make you think, otherwise you or the people interested in the universe would be bored to death! It is also a necessity in the created order for without it where would we be?
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StAnastasia
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Can you elaborate? Can you quote their writings to substantiate your argument about terrestrial uniqueness?
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StAnastasia
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It’s an absurd and unfounded assumption, just like the assumption of some ancients that life was impossible south of the equator.
That sounds theologically more humble and appropriate.
Doubtful. Cockroaches are more resilient and are likely to survive the crash and extinction of the human species.
Indeed.
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inocente
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Seems a little circular as without it we wouldn’t exist to ask that question.
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ricmat
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You mean the guys who discovered a planet orbiting a distant star, and they were 100% sure that it could sustain life? Oh, except that when others tried to find the planet, it wasn’t there. Those guys?
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We may be the peak of material creation.Perhaps you should think like a theologian (that you claim to be).
Why invoke a materialist explanation of survivability as a measure of what is the pinnacle of creation? Certainly you can do better than this!
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ronnie_bonigli
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He’s likely talking about Stephen Barr’s Modern Physics and Ancient Faith and a number of books by Paul Davies, such as Cosmic Jackpot. Neither book says the universe MUST have been designed, what they do say is that there are an amazing number of “coincidences” in the laws and parameters of physics and cosmology that have converged to give a universe that is capable of even having life, any life. The odds that it’s all just a random throw of the cosmic dice are infinitesimal small, though it’s still a possibility. If you are an atheist you can hold in the face of these “coincidences” that life is indeed here against billions or trillions or higher to one odds that the universe could have been suitable for creating ANY kind of life. And a theist can just look at those odds and say it makes sense, since we’re all not an accident anyway.
I’ve read both those books. They’re both very good books, and there are other authors out there who’ve written about the “Anthropic Coincidences” such as Martin Ress with Just Six Numbers as well as more technical papers by physics giants like Brandon Carter and John Wheeler and some others.
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StAnastasia
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Ronnie bonigli, I’ve read that literature as well, and I have no quarrel with the anthropic principle. What I have a quarrel with is the argument that out of 30\22 stars – that’s three hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion starts apiece – our sun is the only star with a planet graced with the appropriate conditions to evolve life. That is a groundless and practically incoherent contention.
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inocente
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Yes. We might think that life is unique by assuming it only evolved once on one planet. That idea would be shattered if we found that life evolved more than once here on Earth, making it much more likely it occurs elsewhere. Dr Felisa Wolfe-Simon thinks she may be on the way to proving that by studying the microbes in Mono Lake, Yosemite. Cool lady.
Times of London
Her home page
A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus (pdf)
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cassini
Guest
Why do threads like this nearly always become a platform for showing off just how good posters are in the area of theoretical physics. Evolution is the new creator and even Catholicism must be bent to its philosophy. The same old names keep popping up as though they are the new prophets, rather the old prophets replaced, in bringing the ‘scientific’ gospel to the vulerable, if you can call theoretical physics science, true science that has any connection with Christianity. Pieman asked a simple question and within five posts we are back to the same old Big Bang expanding and evolving universe. Long gone is the simplicity of God creating all either immediately or over six days. Perhaps a new post should be set up - COULD GOD CREATE THE UNIVERSE AROUND THE ONE EARTH, WHOLE AND ENTIRE WITH ALL ITS CONTENTS ACCORDING TO THEIR KINDS, JUST AS IS DEPICTED IN GENESIS, IN ONE THOUGHT OF HIS WILL? If the answer is YES then how dare anyone calling themselves Catholic offer a different version according to some theories thought up by little brained man.
Anyway pieman, the answer to you question is to be found in the lessons of the Book of Job. He created the stars to show us, and us alone, His Omnipotence and our LIMITS. But human pride, following on in the footsteps of Adam and Eve, makes us think we are not so limited in understanding AS HE THINKS, and that we, unlike Job, can now answer - yes, we do know the order of the world and the ‘reasons thereof.’ God help us all
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tonyrey
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Of course God could have created " THE UNIVERSE AROUND THE ONE EARTH, WHOLE AND ENTIRE WITH ALL ITS CONTENTS ACCORDING TO THEIR KINDS" but He didn’t! To interpret the Old Testament literally brings Christianity into disrepute. What makes you think He created the stars to show us, and us alone**,** His omnipotence and our limits? Surely that is an example of human pride…
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cassini
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Tonyrey, are you kidding us about your being ‘Catholic’? Here we have the Catholic faith with its dogmas and doctrines, most given credibility based on our belief that God is Omnipotent, that He arose from the dead, performed many miracles, that the Apostles and saints were granted many miracles, that He turned water into wine, but that if Catholicism rejects scientific theories it 'brings Christianity into disrepute.’ Into disrepute with whom? Atheist physicists? If ever there was an example of pride in intellectual ctredibility this is it. If one takes Genesis literally, as all the Fathers, saints, popes, faithful did for 1800 years, then they were all intellectually retarded according to your thinking, hopelessly bound to an ignorance that we Catholics today would consider bringing Catholicism into disrepute. How dare any so-called Catholic even think such a thing, let alone post it up to fool others into the same pit of ignorance.
As for the latter remark, that the lessons of Job, taught within Catholicism since its beginning, is an example of human pride, well I will leave others to share in this warped thinking.
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inocente
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I’m not a Catholic, but do like the theology of a certain Pope Benedict, who you may find doesn’t quite agree with your view.
Implicit here is the fact that the classic creation account is not the only creation text of sacred Scripture. Immediately after it there follows another one, composed earlier and containing other imagery. In the Psalms there are still others, and there the movement to clarify the faith concerning creation is carried further: In its confrontation with Hellenistic civilization, Wisdom literature reworks the theme without sticking to the old images such as the seven days. Thus we can see how the Bible itself constantly readapts its images to a continually developing way of thinking, how it changes time and again in order to bear witness, time and again, to the one thing that has come to it, in truth, from God’s Word, which is the message of his creating act. In the Bible itself the images are free and they correct themselves ongoingly. In this way they show, by means of a gradual and interactive process, that they are only images, which reveal something deeper and greater. - philvaz.com/apologetics/p81.htm
There’s a bit about evolution in the article as well, but we should remember that debating evolution is banned in this section of CAF. Back Fence would be the place to start a thread. Sorry if it was my post that got to you
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tonyrey
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In that case the Church is guilty of pride, distorted by warped thinking and fooling others into the same pit of ignorance because the Church accepts evolution!
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ronnie_bonigli
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You are missing the point completely of the discussions of the “Anthropic Coincidences”, I wonder whether you’ve really read the literature. It’s NOT a case of whether there would be some “other planet” out there “with the appropriate conditions to evolve life”, it’s a question of having a UNIVERSE “with the appropriate conditions to evolve life”. If the universe was made of nothing more than one gigantic black hole, we wouldn’t have any life in it. If the universe was made of nothing more than a thinly spread out field of protons and electrons, with no stars or planets, we wouldn’t have life. If no element beyond hydrogen ever formed, we wouldn’t have life. Since Brandon Carter first brought up counterfactual thought experiments regarding the parameters of physics and cosmology in the early 1970’s physicists have discovered what an incredible razor’s edge our complex universe actually sits on. Change any of the values of any of the constants of physics even slightly and we wouldn’t have any possibly of having life anywhere in this universe. Make the strength of the nuclear strong force slightly greater or weaker, or the force of electromagnetism slightly different, or any of dozens of other parameters and we wouldn’t have all there stars and planets and the variety of elements necessary to build life forms out of. It’s the easiest thing in the world to assume that once we had a Big Bang it was “just natural” that it would result in the universe with all these stars and complex elements, but that’s not the case at all.
I’m holding Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind in my hand right now. Penrose is right up there with Stephen Hawking reputation wise, they both came up with the Singularity Theorems applying General Relativity to the Big Bang, proving that the Universe started in a Singularity. Anyway, as one example, it this book Penrose calculates that the odds that the universe would have started out in the low entropy state which would have allowed it to form stars and not simply be a mass of huge black holes is 10^10^123 (that’s 10 raised to the 10th power, raised to the 123rd power) to one. That is an extraordinary figure, we could not possibly even write it down, in ordinary notation it would be a “1” followed by (10 to the 123rd power) Zeros! And this is just one example of counterfactual thought experiments that have been done to cosmological and physics parameters. Again, it doesn’t prove the universe has been designed, but the odds we see here are impressive.
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StAnastasia
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I wonder whether you yourself have read the relevant literature, or understand what the authors are saying. If you had, you wouldn’t attack me as you’ve done in your post.
As a charter member of the International Society for Science and Religion (issr.org.uk/) I am personal friends with members such as Paul Davies, John Polkinghorne, George Ellis, Nancey Murphy, Robert Russell, and the late Arthur Peacocke. I’ve been to and spoken at numerous conferences covering such topics aw the anthropic principle. I reject the notion as hopelessly anthropocentric that the universe and its purpose revolve exclusively around Homo sapiens and planet earth.
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ronnie_bonigli
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“attack you”?
Oy vey, being a little melodramatic there, I wasn’t even close to “attacking” you or anyone else here. Just pointing out that you didn’t appear to understand the debate on the many “anthropic coincidences” and how they "seem" to imply a design of the universe. As opposed to the “Anthropic Principle” (which you mentioned), which trys to explain that apparent design by postulating an infinite or near infinite number of different universe, where “our” universe was the one that was “just right” like “Goldilocks porridge”, (hat tip to your good pal Paul Davies for the Goldilocks analogy, as you would know, Paul doesn’t buy into the infinite other universes theory of the Anthropic Principle).
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StAnastasia
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I certainly do understand them, and have in fact written about them. (Have you?) What one ultimately concludes about the “anthropic coincidences” is another thing. I am not at all bothered by Hawking’s claim that we need not invoke God for the origin of this universe, because my faith in God does not depend on the cosmological argument. Hawking should be aware that question of the existence of God --as ground of all being – is entirely separate from questions of causation in our particular universe.
StAnastasia
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